Sure, sure, sure. You’ve got this album. Somewhere. Or you did have it
at one time. Dog ate it. Disappeared at a party. Ex took off with it,
along with that Krug ’88 and your heart and several other things she
did not bring into the cohabitation. Yeah, you and 25 million other
jakes. No, seriously.

For all the decades of Billboard and other charts, Soundscan sales
figures and the fiduciary interest a lot of people from artists to
managers to labels to ex-bandmates to ex-wives to the IRS have in how
many copies an album sold, it would seem there is no reliable way to
gauge worldwide sales. Several sessions of Internet searching
everything in sight brought no hard figures but one inescapable
conclusion: this is one of the biggest-selling albums of all time.

Maybe that’s not news to you, but it surprised me. Ask me who would be
in the Top 20 of all time and I would say Dark Side, Back in Black,
Eagles Greatest Hits or Hotel California or both, Rumours, Sgt. Pepper
and maybe the White album or Abbey Road, Meat Loaf, several by Michael
Jackson of course, probably one or two by Garth Brooks and that stupid
Shania Twain mega-hit, Boston, one or two by Led Zeppelin, probably a
couple by Whitney, Saturday Night Fever and Mariah Carey’s latest
megatrocity.

That’s a pretty close guess, as it turns out, leaving out only
dreckmeisters Backstreet Boys and Celine Dion. I’m referring to a
Wikipedia list taken from the RIAA, the recording organization created
in 1952 to monitor frequency levels in LPs but which now administers
licenses and royalties and certifies gold/platinum/diamond sales awards
and, oh yes, is also using every strong-arm and questionably legal
means possible to obtain what is supposed to be confidential
information about your Internet activity to get the Feds to knock on
your door and take you away in handcuffs if they think you downloaded a
song without paying for it. But I digress.

Brothers in Arms is not an album I would have thought to include, not
even in the Top 30 or 40, perhaps. Two explanations. One, I’m an
American, and Dire Straits are not that big here. The RIAA lists for
U.S. sales have DS, as a group, coming in at #140 in total sales, and
Brothers in Arms in a 23-way tie for #100 on the list of best-selling
albums of all time, with nine million. Even that figure surprised me a
bit because (explanation two) I have always underestimated the
willingness of the public to shell out big bucks for an album when all
they really want is The Song. In this case, it’s the archetype of The
Song, “Money for Nothing,” or, as we all refer to it, “I Want My MTV.”
More on that later.

Worldwide – is a different story. Artists we’re barely aware of can be
huge stars on the rest of the globe. Cliff Richard – who? – is
Britain’s Elvis, he’s that big. According to one fairly reliable chart
I saw, he’s sold more than 250,000,000 records! As have Greece’s Nana
Mouskouri, and some Russian chick I’ve never heard of, and of course
Abba (did it in only eight years). Three French singers have topped 100
million, as have some Indian guy who didn’t start until 1992 and the
Royal Canadians big band from the 1930s-‘50s, when there weren’t even
100 million people on the planet, right? While Bob Marley was getting
virtually no airplay or recognition in the U.S. he was topping charts
and filling stadiums everywhere else. When he flew into Milan for a
concert, 100,000 people showed up at the airport to greet him. That was
about the same time he played the Roxy nightclub in Los Angeles.

So you might understand my shock, as a myopic Yank, to see Brothers in
Arms clock in somewhere between at least 15 million sales and more
likely 25 million. So – it’s an important album. So – how does it sound
in its new 20th Anniversary Edition re-release? Pretty unimpressive.
Worse than I remembered, actually. Irritating, now.

Keep in mind, I am a bit of a Mark Knopfler, and therefore Dire
Straits, fan. I gave his most recent solo work, Shangri-La, a rave
review in these pages not long ago. Some have called him bland,
pretentious, a Dylan-Springsteen knock-off, a yuppie rocker. Others
(with clearer vision) celebrate his unique, sophisticated songwriting
skills, his virtuoso guitar playing (you can tell a lick is his within
five seconds; it’s rare to be that distinctive) applied to his pithy
off-beat tales of romance and irony, sung with a voice I think is one
of the most disarmingly communicative in the whole pop universe. But
Brothers is not even the best Dire Straits album. So why the
astronomical sales, and the attention to this 20th Anniversary Edition?

“I Want My … I Want My MTV” is why, plain and simple. That song defined
huge. It got played to death, for years. Face it: you and I may have
gotten sick of it decades ago, but it’s A Great Fuckin’ Song. It was
monumental inspiration to start the number with Sting (who co-wrote
with Knopfler) wailing his stratospheric choirboy plea enveloped in
synthesizers building a stairway to heaven, escalating incrementally at
the climax to an intensity savagely exploded by one of the most
irresistible dirty rock guitar riffs in history. You couldn’t walk into
an audio store anywhere in the mid- to late-‘80s without having “Money
for Nothing” thrown on to demonstrate a system’s sonic qualities. Which
is kind of funny, because nothing that demonstrable happens for the
first 70 seconds. I guess that was a minute-10 of shuffling-feet,
stupid-grins anticipation. Followed by ecstatic grins, and “I’ll take
it!” The system, and the disc. One of the first albums released on
compact disc, it supposedly sold more copies than there were CD players
in existence. Think about it.

So here’s the long and short of it. Besides “Money,” there’s the
irresistible shuffle “Walk of Life” (my favorite on this album) and the
leadoff song “So Far Away” is really nice, and … that’s about it for
me. After three strong openers, you get the total seatbelt-snapping
shift to the Brecker brothers’ dreamy trumpet and saxophone in the key
of Kenny G in “Your Latest Trick,” and you wonder where it’s going,
wonder if somebody switched albums on you. “Why Worry” is very pretty –
too pretty, for much of it, though it reminds me of Knopfler’s
Shangri-La style. “Ride Across the River” starts interestingly with a
slight south of the border flavor, and foreshadows some of Knopfler’s
imaginative narratives of later years’ solo work. It’s a 1985 tale
perfect for 2005. “The Man’s Too Strong” shifts radically again to a
strummed-guitar folkie format, with more social philosophizing which
continues into “One World,” with a far less compelling musical setting.
And too much echo in his vocal. Then it all fizzles to an inglorious
seven-minute finish in the title cut’s meandering bit o’ nothing.

Revisiting a re-release is always interesting, to see what perspectives
the years bring and what the modern ears actually hear from a piece of
history. Sometimes it’s downright embarrassing to hear the massive
missteps in something you used to love rise so transparently to the
surface. When I listen to Cream, I have to vocalize along with loud
ya-ya-s so I can’t hear those dreadful lyrics. But sometimes it’s
beautifully clear that what you once loved is indeed music for the
ages. In the case of Brothers in Arms, an album I always liked, the
revisit was an eye-opener. With every detail etched in
highest-resolution 5.1 mix DVD-Audio sound, it is now an album that
irritates the hell out of me. Chief culprit: the drums.

SoundIt
wouldn’t surprise me if this 20th Anniversary Edition became the top
audio demo disc again. The 5.1 mix doesn’t take any chances and most of
the time you don’t hear that much coming from the rear, but what was
once sonically impressive now has more separation and therefore more
wow effect. And a minute-10 into “MTV,” cranked up, you will grin
again, maybe even laugh.

But there’s one big, big … big
problem throughout that drives me crazy. Mark, whatever possessed you
to do whatever you did to the drums? They sound like they’re filled
with gravel. And water. No snap. No pop. Not a solid, smacking hit on a
single snare or tom. Did you fall in love with a compressor saleswoman?
What were you, as co-producer of the new mix, thinking of?

I figured they always sounded like that but it never bothered me before
because it wasn’t in such a sonically transparent setting. I was
blaming the departure of original drummer Pick Withers for the problem;
I listened to earlier discs, nice solid if simple drumming, then the
album following Brothers, On Every Street, returned to those rhythmic
standards, so I figured it was only the Pick-less Brothers in Arms,
only drummers Terry Williams and Omar Hakim to blame, or more fairly,
the guy in charge who hired them and let that squishy sound take over.
But then I finally went back to the original disc and lo and behold –
it don’t sound so bad! It wasn’t a 1985 mistake – Knopfler lost his
mind in ’05. He took drum sounds that were kind of airy anyway and
pushed them over the edge. I think something additional was applied; I
don’t think they showed up this way simply because of the surround
sound context. They sound the same on the re-released CD stereo mix.
Only in “Your Latest Trick” do the drums take on any different timbre
and approach, and that in itself seems pretty odd.

Otherwise … in “Walk of Life,” the cheesy keyboards are nicely
separated out and the vocals are much more clear and appealing in the
5.1 than in the stereo mix, and though it’s all still front-heavy a
little tambourine comes peeking out behind you, left and right. “Why
Worry” and “One World” feature a big, big voice, and “The Man’s Too
Strong” has some really big piano chords that shake the walls. That’s
fun. Okay, album’s almost done, title cut … what’s this? there! a noise
from the rear! at last! An apocalyptic keyboard drone, that stays
mostly on the right. Where, oh where, is the Sir George Martin of 5.1,
and if you find him will you please give him Mr. Knopfler’s phone
number. With the way he messed with this classic, I’d say he’s in dire
straits.

Extra FeaturesWell,
who needs extras when you’re re-releasing Fort Knox? So there are none,
short of a self-promotional “appreciation.” I would’ve appreciated
leaving the damn drums alone.